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We said last time a successful entrepreneur is the person who makes an idea happen, even if there are a lot of unexpected problems, and even if it's not a very good idea in the first place. And then we added that they don't do it with one roll of the dice. The most successful entrepreneurs we know are extremely risk adverse. They don't make large bets.

Instead if you want to follow their lead, you'd take small, smart steps. Specifically, you'd:

1. Start with desire. You find/think of something you want. You don't need a lot of passion; you only need sufficient desire to get started. ("I really want to start a restaurant, but I haven't a clue if I will ever be able to open one.")

2. Take a smart step as quickly as possible toward their goal. What's a smart step? It's one where you act quickly with the means at hand. What you know, who you know, and anything else that's available. ("I know a great chef, and if I beg all my family and friends to back me, I might have enough money to open a place.") You make sure that step is never going to cost more than it would be acceptable to you to lose should things not work out. And you bring others along to acquire more resources, spread the risk and confirm the quality of your idea.

3. Reflect and build on what you have learned from taking that step. You need to do that because every time you act reality changes. Sometimes the step you take gets you nearer to what you want ("I should be able to afford something just outside of downtown"); sometimes what you want changes ("It looks likes there are an awful lot of Italian restaurants nearby. We are going to have to rethink our menu.") If you pay attention, you always learn something. So after you act, ask: Did those actions get you closer to your goal? ("Yes. It looks like I will be able to open a restaurant.") Do you need additional resources to draw even closer? ("Yes. I'll need to find another chef. The one I know can only do Italian.") Do you still want to obtain your objective? ("Yes.")

4. Repeat.

Act. Learn. Build. Repeat. This is what defeats uncertainty...providing that you actually start and try to make your idea a reality.

All this sounds logical, most of you said, but then people, like David F. Puente and Steven Boccone, asked what about planning? Is that a key component? And others, such as Arnaud Kleinveld, added "don’t you need a lot of resources?"

Good questions. Let’s deal with them.

Planning is okay, but...

It is not that I am against planning. But it starts with the assumption that you can forecast the future with a high level of certainty. If you can, then by all means:

Forecast the future.

Construct a number of plans for achieving what you want, picking the optimal one;

Assemble the necessary resources (more on that in a minute) and

Then go out and implement the plan.

Again this work really well when things in the future are going to be similar to the immediate past. If you are trying to figure out how to sell an existing product into an adjacent market, for example, no radical overhaul in your thinking is necessary. The way you traditionally solve for this works just fine and you never want to discard something that works well.

But, and it is a huge but, the number of extremely predictable situations we all face is decreasing.

In the face of the unknown, the Act Learn Build Repeat models works best.

To drive home the difference, between predictable situations and ones that are not, and to get us started down the path of the best way to deal with the new world we all face, let’s imagine two different scenarios that we presented before in a different context.

In the first, you want to get from Washington, D.C. to Boston. Easy, right? You figure out when you will be going—say next week—and then you start to make any number of practical decisions:

Do you need to get there quickly?

Are there places you would like to stop along the way?

What is your preferred method of travel?

Is there a specific time of day you want to travel?

You get the idea. You’d plan out your itinerary—“I’d like to stay a day or two in New York City on the way—and determine what is the best way of travel for what you want to accomplish (“I think I’ll drive”) and you plan out a route. Maybe you use a traditional map or a GPS to chart out your course.

If you get off track, it is no big deal. You double check the map; reboot the GPS, or even ask for directions—and get back on your way.

Now suppose you were dropped into the middle of an Amazon Rain Forest and you had to get home? You wouldn't do a lot of planning, and the kind you did would be different. You wouldn't be thinking of the sequence of steps—let’s see once I leave midtown Manhattan, I want to get over to the West Side Highway and start looking for signs for I-95 north. In fact, you wouldn’t do much planning at all.

You’d take a small step in what you hope is the right direction and then pause and see what you have learned from taking that small step. (“Hmm. I am still on solid ground and I think I see a sliver of daylight in the direction I am heading. Let me go and take another step that way.”)

You would Act. (You’d take a small step) Learn from taking that step. (“I seem to be going in the right direction.") You would Build off of that learning by taking another step. And so on.

You notice in the first model—D.C. to Boston—you need to have a lot of resources to get going. In the second model, initially you just need enough to keep you alive, as you get underway.

Researching, planning and gathering resources doesn’t help you much when the world is changing as fast as it is these days. You can come up with a plan that is perfect—for a world that passed you by while you were spending all that time planning. Similarly, you could end up solving for a problem that has either gone away, or been solved by someone else while you were lining up resources.